


Burn So Bright

by Tabithian



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are maps in Tim's apartment from all over the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn So Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [an idea I had a while back](http://tabithian.tumblr.com/post/39454433374/things-that-are-terrible-because-i-cant-write-it).

There are maps in Tim's apartment from all over the world. Ones that have been well-used, folded and folded again over their original lines, corners bent back and sometimes torn away completely. Little divots from the tip of a pen or pencil, carefully drawn routes with destinations circled. A stain or two from coffee or tea. 

There's an old globe in Tim's apartment as well. Along with most of the maps he has, it's long out of date. And like most of the maps, there are notations on it that would seem insignificant at first glance, a date with a string of letters following that could mean anything and nothing. Idle thoughts perhaps.

They aren't.

The maps and globe belonged to Tim's mother, keepsakes of a different time. And of that time, there's one last thing of hers he keeps in his apartment. 

A journal bound in leather with entries written in a code that took Tim years to fully understand. That had been the point, he knows. Understanding what the string of letters attached to a specific latitude and longitude had been just the start. 

Deciphering the meaning to what he found, _that_ was a challenge. 

********

Tim's mother loved puzzles, and she made sure to pass that on to Tim from the earliest age she could. Toys covered in soft fabric with different textures and colors that would rattle or chime or make crinkling sounds that could be matched with one another. 

As he grew older the puzzles became more complex, sorting cubes and wooden puzzles. Flashcards with vibrantly colored animals to catch his eye, games his mother would play with him. 

Hide and Seek was always his favorite, especially when his mother would teach him new and better ways to stay hidden. How to use the environment around him and blend in. How to hide in plain sight.

Older still, and it would be small mysteries to solve. Stories she would tell him and ask him what he think happened and why. What were the clues that had given the thief away? How could they have gotten away with it? 

His mother's smile and challenge in her voice as she asked him, “Do you think you'll be able to figure this one out?”

The mysteries grew more complex as he grew, until she was taking stories from the newspaper or a news broadcast. (Tim never mentioned the quadruple somersault, but he knows his mother saw.) 

Friends of her mother – old family friends or people she'd met at school – would visit sometimes. Bringing little presents and teaching Tim things they'd learned while his mother watched. Things he was sure most children his age shouldn't know, but he never said anything. 

Selina was always his favorite, more so when she brought a kitten for his mother. Tim's mother had smiled graciously and named the kitten Carmine.

He learned martial arts because _Gotham_ , but also because of his mother. (And a quadruple somersault.)

Selina taught him lock picking, hand ruffling his hair the first time he managed it in under a minute, while his mother looked on. Tim learned computers because they were fun, a new kind of puzzle for him to figure out. 

Tim learned the value of maps from his mother, the way roads traversed the world round and round again. He learned the richness and wealth to the world's history from his father, ancient cultures and civilizations. 

All pieces to a larger puzzle he hadn't known the shape of at the time.

********

After a time Tim's parents went on trips more and more often. 

He would get postcards from their latest destination, a small message from his mother written on the back telling him about the trip. 

And if that particular destination featured on the news a day or two later in regards to a theft, that was just a coincidence. Surely.

The trips started to become more frequent, and they would last longer and Tim.

His mother instilled a love of puzzles and mysteries in him at such a young age, it was only a matter of time until he started to get bored. Until that quadruple somersault became more than an unspoken secret. ( _Gotham's_.)

Gotham's dangerous, yes, but if you know how to move quietly, carefully. If you know the best ways to hide, you can move about safely enough. 

You can even follow someone, if you're careful not to let them see you.

********

Tim gets a postcard, long after his parents took a trip to Haiti.

The image on the front is a riot of colors, local flora bordering a small map of the area. On the back in painfully familiar handwriting is a string of letters. 

Under that, a simple message:

 

_Do you think you'll be able to figure this one out?_

 

********

Tim figures it out, but it takes time. 

He finds out that the strings of letters on his mother's maps and the treasured globe are the key to the entries in the journal.

Mentions of local lore, traditions for that location. Its food and drink and celebrations. Music and dances and the weight of its history, told generation to generation. Secret treasure, whether gold and jewels or a hidden waterfall, a beautiful flower.

The journal leads Tim to files his mother kept secure in a location not even Tim's father knew about. Inside he finds not maps, no, but more journals. Clues to a large organization, global in scale. Agents and operatives working for the organization, their strengths and weaknesses. Who to trust, who to keep an eye on. 

He finds dates and times and the vague outlines of plans that match up to the marked points on his mother's maps, the globe. The entries in the journal Tim kept. (The postcards.)

Even more, he finds dates and times and the vague outlines of plans that don't match up. Ones that took place long before he was born, before his mother met his father. Before his mother was born.

He goes through them, one by one. Sifting through the data until he has the edges done, pieces of a puzzle coming together.

********

Bruce's files on Carmen Sandiego are. Sparse at best, fragmented at worst.

Tim's seen him staring at them, sometimes. When Carmen comes too close to Gotham, almost like she's taunting him. (Like a teenager poking at a junkyard dong, tethered by its chain.)

Tim knows why, now, of course. Why Carmen's profile is filled with discrepancies upon discrepancies. 

Bruce keeps an eye on her the way he does everyone. He keeps an eye on her, but she's not dangerous the way Joker is. The way Two-Face is. Not like them, no, but maybe worse in her own way.

“How did she do it?” Dick asks, staring at the space where the T-Rex used to be. 

Tim looks at Bruce, who is reading the note Carmen left in place of the T-Rex. 

“I don't know,” Bruce says, “but I plan to find out.”

Tim looks up at the Penny, at the string of letters painted across its face, and wonders _why now?_

********

“It was a warning,” Tim says, when Bruce finds out. (He was bound to, Tim always knew.)

Carmen knows who they are, what they do. Tread carefully.

“A warning.”

Not the kind Bruce is thinking of. Or maybe, worse. A mother will do anything for her child, even face the dreaded Batman.

Tim looks at Bruce. 

“She has secrets too,” he says. 

Ones that Tim knows, that Bruce knows. (Secrets make the world go round, secrets tear it down.)

Bruce looks away first. Carmen isn't dangerous like Joker, like Two-Face, but she's dangerous still. 

“ACME will get it back for you.”

It's like a game. Carmen Sandiego does the impossible, and ACME chases after her while the world watches. Waiting to see what she'll do next.

She's like them, Tim doesn't say, but knows Bruce hears all the same. A legend, symbol. One that can't be allowed to vanish, fade away. 

More important than a mother with a husband and son. More important than her own life, her hopes, her dreams.

Bruce looks at Tim, more red in his suit than there used to be. He looks at Tim, more his mother's son than ever before.

“Someone needs to clean the Penny,” Bruce says, and walks away.

********

Tim gets another postcard after Bruce's death. 

There's nothing truly notable about it. The image on the front is of Gotham's skyline at night, glittering and beautiful, dangers hidden in the shadows. On the back is a string of letters and the same message he received on a similar postcard years ago.

It's a challenge of sorts. A mystery, a puzzle.

Tim's very good at those, his mother made sure of it.


End file.
